#ProTip for Harry Reid: Give It Up, You’re Losing

Harry Reid’s obsessive campaign against Charles and David Koch has been drawing negative commentary lately, as observers note that it has gotten no traction with voters, is far removed from the issues that most people care about, and if anything is generating sympathy for the brothers. The Democrats’ latest venture–the screening of Robert Greenwald’s new edition of “Koch Brothers Exposed” at the Visitor Center in the Capitol Building–lends more support to that critique. (For more background on the event, including its apparent illegality, see our posts here, here, here and here.)

The unveiling of the Greenwald video, which was almost entirely a rehash of the one he released two years ago–only with a cameo by Harry Reid!–was heavily promoted by Reid and Nancy Pelosi, not to mention Greenwald’s own organization, such as it is. (Greenwald is best remembered as the director of “Xanadu,” after which he never made another film and instead was relegated to producing far-left videos for a secret group of rich backers.) Nevertheless, it drew a pitiful audience of around 40 Democratic Party staffers and bored reporters.

Press coverage was negligible. The New York Times, the Democratic Party’s most uncritical booster in the press, didn’t deign to mention it. The home-town Washington Post covered it in this snarky piece by Dana Milbank, who is mostly a humorist. Milbank said little about the event other than to note his own role, which consisted of bringing along a bag of products made by Koch Industries to see whether those attending the event would boycott them. The results were amusing:

To test the depths of Americans’ Koch dependency, I went to the screening with a shopping bag full of Koch products. I offered them as free samples after the screening of “Koch Brothers Exposed.” Even after hearing all of Greenwald’s allegations about the Koch brothers’ evils, the attendees made off with every last roll of Angel Soft and Brawny, and even took the Lycra pantyhose and the Dixie cups.

That must be discouraging to Reid, who has urged Americans to boycott Koch’s products.

The level of disinterest in this officially-sponsored Democratic Party event is striking. The Democrats, via Brave New Films, put up video of the event on YouTube with the title “Live Press Briefing and Premiere of Koch Brothers Exposed.” No doubt they wanted to add to the skeleton crew who actually attended the screening. But so far, only 3,000 people have watched the YouTube video. That is remarkable, given Reid and Pelosi’s promotion of the event.

By way of comparison, 5,381 people have watched this video, which ridicules “Koch Brothers Exposed,” here on Power Line:

When the real thing can’t compete with parodies, notwithstanding the backing of the Senate Majority Leader and the House Minority Leader, it is time to find a new campaign theme–maybe something that actually addresses the issues the American people care about.